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AMD and Fujitsu Spin Off Static Memory Giant
prostoalex writes "AMD and Fujitsu will form a new memory company. While corporations typically form new spinoffs every time you turn around, this one is different, claims ZDNet, since it looks like AMD will be splitting into two companies, one dealing in the microprocessor market, another in memory."
AMD has had a history of not just working with processors, such as flash memory. It would only seem logical that AMD would expand revenues through market expansion.
And another step forward to Microsoft-Amd-Intel-Fujitsu-Hp-Compaq-AOL-Warner-S ony jjoint, which is obviously to come :)
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
Get your 512XP+ DDR DIMM. 384MB chips that are as good as the 512MB piece...
The Mothership
AFAIK Flash-AMD subsidizes currently a lot of AMD's processor business, so current part of AMD that makes Processors seems to be confident in it's future to take this step.
And remember that AMD is much-much more than Athlon/Hammer, they make lot's of different processors.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
AMD is a big player in the CPU market, but there are a lot of companies doing memory chips, isn't there? So, why on earth are they doing it? I hope it's viable for them , because they can lose a lot of money if they're not careful.
iMHO.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
mutter, mutter, MHz myth...mutter, mutter...
The Mothership
There are more indepth articles about this here and here. The latter article discussed the motivation for the move in a little more depth:
"This is only going to help AMD and Fujitsu become as stronger competitor and move up in market position," said Krewell. "They are in better shape to challenge Intel because they appear as one stronger brand, rather than as two lesser brands."
- Welcome the coming of the New World Odour
..they can just manufacture space heaters. I mean, the infasructure is already there so it comes naturally.
And what I feel is a better article.
Straying slightly off the beaten path does anyone know if they have any plans of how big they can make CF cards? I know there is a the IBM Microdrive which is upto 1GB but I would think the CF would be cheaper looking at the current prices of 512Mb pieces
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
The Flash business is the (relative) cash cow that's keeping the rest of the company afloat. No way it's going to split.
That's a neat trick -- include an outrageous-but-believeable-to-newbies statment in your story submission, get it posted! I'll have to try that.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Would the Windows PCs be lemons then?
Great! Now i can get dirt cheap memory, that requires 70W of power and 20 heatsinks!
Although there are filesystems available for embedded systems that distribute writes to flash as much as possible, flash drives will wear out a lot faster than their microdrive counterparts in write-intensive applications.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
AMD make flash. Nowhere in the article does it talk about Static RAM.
:-)
When talk exceeds the bounds of the talker's knowledge, there ought to be a segfault
How wonder what relationship this has with Siemens/Infinion. Siemens cooperates with Fujitsu and is very successful in the German market. And Infinion is a Siemens-spin-off that produces memory as well...
Hey, will they be the leaders in the future of Flash?
The new company, which will include all of both companies' flash memory operations, will be headed by Bertrand Cambou, who was recently promoted to senior vice president at AMD, the newspaper said, adding that the company would have one combined sales force.
Hey just think, if they got Sony in there memory sticks would be everywhere!
--------
Free your mind.
And another step forward to Microsoft-Amd-Intel-Fujitsu-Hp-Compaq-AOL-Warner-M a&Pa's_Country_Cookin-S ony jjoint, which is obviously to come :)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
newer Athlon XPs put off more heat per area than the sun
;)
I didn't believe you so I actually tested it. And you're right! My Athlon 2600 XP box puts off WAYYY more heat than my Ultra 80!
My journal has hot
AMD's Flash business has always contributed to the bottom line enough to help cover losses during R&D years like this one and last year. With them seperated, the Fujitsu/AMD combination will be able to loan the money to the AMD processor company and list it different on the Balance sheet. This will help them both in the accounting since it will be accounts receivable instead of just play lack of revenues overall.
This is a good move for AMD. I am really excited to see the future of AMD.
we'll be fortunate if we get out of this cessspool with any memorIEs/chips, etc...
lookout bullow. the daze of the Godless greed/fear/death based payper liesense hostage ransom stock markup bullshipping industrIE, is dissolving into coolapps.
gov.va.msn.?net?/~search? (VAST) effort to funnell US.
check with yOUR creator, before making any decisions that will affect all of us from now on.
Fujitsu and AMD had previously been working together ina joint venture as FASL (Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited) at a plant in japan with a combined workforce (though mostly japanese). They recently finished a new fab in the same town and FASL had already been doing contract work for Siemens. Since FASL had been such a success, I guess they decided it would be a good idea to spin off their remaining assests in flash memory and model it on FASL as a single flash juggernaut.
I wonder what they will do for the AMD shares. (I don't care about Fujitsu : I don't have any ;) )
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Once the division is complete, the blood bath that is their processor division will become even more evident. How long before the shareholders demand that AMD leave a business that is throwing away their money (and always will) and concentrate on a business that actually makes money.
While the processor industry will be poorer for it, there's no reason why the shareholders should have to foot the bill just so we have competition that lowers Intel's prices and makes their processors faster.
Well, I don't think AMD never had any experience with DRAM, and Fujitsu, though has, was never a big player (big ones are Micron, Samsung, and Infinion, Hynix is dying so they don't count anymore). (Slightly off-topic - in term of SRAM, SONY is a huge player - who would have thought they were a big semiconductor company as well as consumer electronics?)
Same time - few realize the tanglement between AMD and Fujitsu. They have been doing ventures together for a long time now - a few years back they put together a joint plant - it wasn't a great success as I remembered it, though
Did y'all know Fujitsu is *the* largest computer / IT stuff manufacture in Japan?
Lastly, AMD flash is going toward Mirror bit, while Intel is going toward multi-level storage. Honestly, intel version has more expandability (to a point - storing 1024 levels per cell is just impossible) - so we will see how that works out.
Just random stuff I had in mind when I read the article - thought people might find them useless but nontheless mildly interesting.
I personally wish them well, but I do wonder what would happen if they go into DRAM. They would either get slaughtered (lack of experience), or some DRAM manufactures would just go off and die (even more, for Hynix, or severely cripple, like NEC, Mitsubishi, etc who are small players in the DRAM area). DRAM market simply won't hold this many people (already seen so many consolidations as of the past).
My life in the land of the rising sun.
This is an optimistic interpretation of what's going on. The pessimistic interpretation is that they expect their processor unit to tank totally, and they don't want it to take down their flash memory works, so they're splitting it off. It's like the Enterprise-D separating the saucer section when the warp core in engineering is about to breech.
There are some points to clear up here.
Yes, AMD and Fujitsu have been in cahoots for a long time, but it was a really great venture rather than the poor one you hint at. They created FASL (Fujitsu-AMD Semiconductor Limited) which ships the lion's share of the world's flash. Several more fabs have been started as part of the FASL venture. Iw was, and is, a great success.
Intel has been in multi-level cells, but the practical limit on it is the four-level cell they have now. They have just recently gotten that to work reliably. AMD's Mirror Bit cell is new, and obviously has only a four-bit cell, but when combined with the mirroring and multi-level, you've got a 16-bit cell. Evil.
AMD will never, ever go into DRAM. It's a loser. Prices fluctuate way too much and you can't make much money at it. Their strength is in flash memory, and they know it.
This is both funny _and_ insightful!
AMD is going to report yet another huge quarterly loss in a few days. Their losses have been so large that they are out of money and will have to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy, probably by the end of this month. The only question left is what will happen to their Opteron CPU. Probably they will continue to operate their fab (if the lenders will permit that) on a small scale for a few months while they look for a buyer for the Opteron business which will probably go to Intel who will then shut it down.
I can't figure out where the benefit is for them, unless AMD's processor divison is expected to lose money (spinoffs are great for this -- you can saddle them with debts from the other company. Coca-Cola used to regularly do this.)
May we never see th
Probably they will continue to operate their fab (if the lenders will permit that) on a small scale for a few months while they look for a buyer for the Opteron business which will probably go to Intel who will then shut it down.
I doubt Intel will be interested in buying anything but patents.
May we never see th
My Athlon 2600 XP box puts off WAYYY more heat than my Ultra 80! ;)
This is because Sun makes reasonable power consumption a genuine design goal for UltraSPARC. I would bet that controlling power consumption is one reason why UltraSPARCs appear to be falling behind in the SPEC pseudo-wars. Regardless, it is pretty impressive that 1GHz UltraSPARC III systems can have the FP throughput of 2.8GHz Pentium 4s but at only 50 or so watts per CPU.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I believe the original poster was referring to
3 2k eynote.pdf
this presentation by one of Intel guys:
http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/library/micro
(check out slide #8)
comparing power density on CPU surface with other
hot objects. Hot plate power density was
surpassed by Pentium II, now we are moving
pretty fast to nuclear reactor, and Sun surface
is there on the plot too!
Anyway, check it out.
Paul Bu.
You gotta love a company who's log looks like an erect penis! (use your imagination a little)
Yeah, but try explaining that to the clueless PHBs who think that Wintel workstations outperform Unix RISC workstations for CAD based on the clock frequency. :( Not only that but there's also the claim that Wintel boxes are *cheaper*. (In initial cost, yes, in TCO, no way.)
*sigh*
My journal has hot
Not only that but there's also the claim that Wintel boxes are *cheaper*.
I'm still convinced Suns are better engineering workstations than PCs for the money. Soon, however, the Opteron will be very enticing, and will be pitted sqarely against the UltraSPARC IIIi. PTC is beginning to sell Pro/E for Linux, so Opteron/Linux workstations could be very good. I hope Sun has a business plan to beat/join this trend.
One thing I've noticed, regardless of the CPU, is that the Sun graphics cards have a very high-quality output. For example, my old Creator 3D-based workstation has great anti-aliasing in Pro/E, but a high-end Compaq/Windows NT workstation I saw about a year ago had absolutely terrible anti-aliasing. My experience with PC graphics is limited, so enough time researching PC cards would probably turn up a winner eventually.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
One thing I've noticed, regardless of the CPU, is that the Sun graphics cards have a very high-quality output. For example, my old Creator 3D-based workstation has great anti-aliasing in Pro/E, but a high-end Compaq/Windows NT workstation I saw about a year ago had absolutely terrible anti-aliasing. My experience with PC graphics is limited, so enough time researching PC cards would probably turn up a winner eventually.
I agree...I'm looking an Ultra 60 with an Elite 3D graphics card and it's output is in many ways better than the NVidia card on the workstation next to it, running the same software (I-DEAS 9.2)
My journal has hot
The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four
forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and
bloody-mindedness.
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